Bile is unfailingly present at Cambara’s side for most of their waking hours, steadfast in his supportive companionship, trustworthy in his offer of a large space in which she moves around free from all constraints. On more than one occasion, after everyone else has turned in, the two have gone together, and, too exhausted, she has dropped off into a deep sleep the instant her head hit the pillow in what used to be his niece Raasta’s room. It is obvious to everybody that Bile, dejected in appearance when she is absent, is mad with longing for her. Things are such that he considers every activity that keeps them apart an unacceptable interference, a meddling into the affaire de coeur, and he hurts.
Overcome with anxiety, Kiin, in Cambara’s presence, leads a spirited existence. She prays that everything will work out well for every one of her guests: that Gudcur will stay buried, if he is dead; that none of his minions will prove to be a nuisance; that Cambara will make a success of the play to which she, Kiin, is inviting a select audience and a few loyal intimates. But Kiin avoids saying anything when someone alludes to Bile and Cambara being an item, especially with Arda present. Given that she has helped bring forth the closeness, she is under the impression that it will be long-lasting. Raxma wears feistiness for her friend’s benefit whenever Bile is not around, knowing that it will cheer her up and make working with her a lot easier and less acrimonious. Nor does she want to be drawn into the relationship either.
On the opening night itself, with butterflies taking residence in her viscera, Cambara’s innards become a battlefield. She tells herself that a war has been won, which is all good and inspiringly welcome, but will the battle be lost?
The generator is on, and you can hear its humming noise from half a mile away. To ensure that there are no lapses in security, which Dajaal has planned very tightly, Seamus has run the cables all the way to the checkpoints. There are several inner and outer circles and a minimum of three checkpoints, the one farthest being manned by Kaahin, a close associate of Dajaal’s, the second by Qasiir, and the one just before you get to the house by no other than Dajaal himself. All manner of communication gadgets are in use: walkie-talkies, a landline telephone at the property, and several handheld mobiles. At each checkpoint, there are men with machine guns hidden from view, the second security ring having the only “technical” as part of a show of force, if it comes to that. The phone keeps ringing whenever there are doubts about the identity of a person who has presented him — or herself — and whether this person has been invited. These are checked against the master list of guests, which is with Arda. Kiin is in continuous communication with all the parties concerned, considering that she has provided the names of the guests and their details in the first place. The play is being staged under the auspices of the Women’s Network, which, as host, along with Hotel Maanta, has supplied the evening’s refreshments.
In spite of the tension resulting from the tight security, there is a jovial atmosphere, with the guests behaving normally once they come through the rings, after being frisked, some having been asked what they think of as impertinent questions. Once or twice, Kiin has had to go in person to Dajaal’s site of operations to sort out things. In all, only two persons have been turned away, because Kiin couldn’t vouch for them or didn’t know them well enough to allow them through. With no panic buttons pressed, Dajaal, Kiin, and Arda give the go-ahead that it may start when all guests have been accounted for.
There are altogether about twenty-five invited guests in the hall, only three of them men: Irrid and Hudhudle from the Maanta, and Odeywaa, the shopkeeper, husband to a very active member of the Women’s Network, back from the National Reconciliation Conference in Nairobi just to see the play. There is another woman, a stringer for the BBC Somali Service in Mogadiscio, a pocket-sized woman, very intense, with a shrill voice when she speaks, with eyeglasses as thick as the nether end of a tumbler. She has a firm handshake and has the habit of poring over every statement Cambara makes with a view to analyzing and perhaps commenting on it. Cambara feels discomfited by the woman’s probing eyes, and she can’t wait for the chance to flee from the woman soon after Kiin is done with the introductions and the woman speaks of her interest in interviewing her and Qaali and Gacal. She reminds Cambara that it is thanks to her announcement on the BBC “Missing Persons” program that mother and son have been reunited. The head of the Somali Service wants a follow-up in the form of a live interview. Now she excuses herself and runs off to attend to new guests arriving.
As the curtain is prepared to rise on the minimalist stage and as Bile dons his mask and prepares to walk onstage, Cambara, excited, is full of fidget. She anxiously turns away, looking weary and acting as if she might flee from the hall. It is only when she hears Bile’s baritone voice that she reinvests afresh her confidence, trust, and gratitude in everyone who has had anything to do with the play. And she remembers Bile assuring her — he is now onstage — that there is nothing to worry about, that the two boys will be all right, and that the crowd of villagers, none with a speaking part (all of them women recruited earlier in the day, and all given cash gifts by Arda), will be fine too. The action onstage is proving him to be correct.
Arda sits way in the back, her chair in semidarkness, chewing on the nerve ends of her guts, watching the performance from that viewpoint. Cambara, however, has insisted on not being in the hall now, scared that she might suffer a crack-up. After all, she has woven nearly every thread of her private, professional, and public life into the yarn that is about to be presented, with her directing it; Bile, Qaali, Gacal, and SilkHair acting in it; Kiin and Raxma volunteering to be in it. Failure of such a many-sided project will be difficult to take; she can’t bear the thought of it at all.
Then Cambara’s mind, in a way, walks out on her, as though in a bizarre daydream of the type seen when one is overexhausted and tense at the same time. She loses touch with everything that matters: She has no idea who or where she is anymore, what she is supposed to do where, and when she looks at the faces of the women and men sitting in the hall and watching her play, she finds she cannot name any of them. Nor can she put a name to her mother’s or Raxma’s faces, which look familiar but no more than that. Hence, away with her, since she won’t be able to stand the tension gnawing at her guts in the first few moments. She sneaks away and goes to her rooms to have a few moments of quiet reflection. She wants to be alone, the first time she has been so for quite a long while, and where better to be by herself than a bathroom in which she does not think of herself as a guest or one that is in as good nick as Bile’s.
She returns to the site, after recovering the self that earlier went on a walkabout, before the end of the play and finds Kiin pacing back and forth in the rear of the hall, busy keeping an eye on the guests, many of the women seated and by all accounts enjoying the story unfolding. Now that she is back, Cambara also keeps a close watch on the front row, trying to work out if she can tell whether they are as attentive as she might like them to be. She assumes that an author of a book, given the chance to study the body language of someone reading it, can in all likelihood figure out when the interest in it slackens off.
At some point, relaxing in view of the fact that there is rapt attention, with no one stirring in her or his seat, she remarks a change in the front row seating, noticing the belated arrival of a woman who was not there before. From where she is, because the light is so muted, Cambara cannot make out who the people are with certainty, cannot identify even those whom she knows, except the two men, namely Seamus, because he is white, and Dajaal, because of his military bearing, and because he is the only one standing close by, with his walkie-talkie faintly chattering. It is the woman to the right of Seamus that draws her attention. Cambara then thinks that there is something unusually familiar about the bodily configuration of the woman who is wearing a headgear with the purpose of disguising her identity. The woman has wrapped herself up in a shawl in a manner meant to put doubt into Cambara, to make her question her first judgment. No sooner has she recognized who it is and prepared to call to her than the breath catches in Cambara’s throat, and she chokes on it. All the same, she knows that even though the light is faint and the distance between them is great, she can tell who it is: Maimouna, Raxma’s and her mutual friend and lawyer. Maybe she has come to Mogadiscio not only to watch the play but also to represent Qaali and Gacal, on account of Gacal’s lost documents? Maimouna, big, black, and very beautiful, is in the first row, with Kiin to her left and Farxia to her right.